Advising and Counseling has
distributed table tents around the campus advertising Advising month.
Please contact them if any department would like a few extra to
distribute around their area.

New Student Orientation
dates have been confirmed. Information is up on the plasmas and the web.
Stacey will leave some date reference cards with Mari.

Admissions Discussion* - Jon
Betz/Kim Coufal

Please see attachment A.

Updates from the Dean/LLT

April 6th –
Tarpley Awards

Budget Updates: State
revenue is still down and property taxes are showing a decline. The only
other areas we can control as an institution are fees and tuition.
Administration is continuing to look at every avenue to help alleviate
the situation. The possibility of four day work weeks or furloughs is
also being considered. Julius encouraged anyone who may have an idea on
how we can save or earn more revenue to please e-mail those suggestions
to Oliver and copy Mari.

Health Sciences Newsletter

The March newsletter was
distributed.

Department Updates

Dental: The entire class passed their anesthesia boards.

HHPC: All updates appear in the newsletter.

HIT: Sandra Johnson is serving on the editorial review
board for a new textbook.

MLT: Mary is busy moving in all equipment and instruments
in her new classroom. She is also busy teaching this semester.

Nursing: Nursing is busy with applications and curriculum
work.

PTA: The class of 2007 is at a 100% pass rate. Work is
winding down on the 10-year self study.

Physical Education: Bev and Marty Hill will be presenting
Bev’s online Physical Education courses at a national conference in
Tampa, FL.

Simulation Center/Respiratory: Henry and Bobbie are
attending training on Texas at the Leardal Manufacturing facility.

Surgical Tech: All updates appear in the newsletter.

Roundtable Discussion – Open
Forum

No items offered for
discussion.

Attachment A

1.How
long should it take from applying to the college to the assignment of a student
(Datatel) number?

ØDatatel
numbers are automatically assigned at the end of the process of entering an
application into the system. This process can take a minimum of 24 hours up to
48 hours, depending on what time of the year the application is submitted. Many
of our applications are provided via the internet. Although a prospective
student may submit the application at 5:01 on a Friday, we do not pull the
application until Monday morning. The 24-48 hours starts from that point
on. Roxanna Hughes is the one who enters these applications. Please send any
e-mails to her specifically with a very detailed subject line and include as
much identifying information as you have on the student. Admissions is also
continuing to work on trying to link the online application information to
datatel directly to eliminate the manual input. Jon added during the discussion
of this question that Admissions has had a consulting firm do an analysis on
their processes. Several of the issues presented today have been directly
addressed by the report. Hopefully by this time next year, these issues will no
longer exist. Communication was stressed several times.

2.Who
should be contacted if we cannot find a Student (Datatel) number?

ØContact
Admissions. There are a myriad of reasons to “not find a Datatel number” and
therefore, there may be many different peoplewithin
Admissions to contact. In addition, depending on the information you wish to
have, people have different accesses to Datatel and can/cannot retrieve certain
information. Typically, we recommend you try to pull up a student first by
name, then by social security number. Kim shared that there is no specific
format you must use when inputting a student’s name. Generally speaking, if you
cannot find a student in the system through this means, they are simply not in
the system. Once again, communication with admissions, anyone in admissions,
was stressed.

3.How
long should it take to evaluate official transcripts for acceptable transfer
credit?

ØNo
official transcript evaluations or posting of transfer credit to the student’s
academic record will be done until after the student has enrolled at SJC and
the official census day has passed. If the student has attended SJC and
transferred to another college, no transfer credit will be posted to their SJC
academic record until the student re-enrolls at SJC and the appropriate date
requirements outlined have been met. It is really up to the student to make
sure that all this information has been turned in in a timely manner. SJC does
not want to discourage enrollment by setting dates far in advance. If all of
the above is in place, the transcript is placed in order of receipt, and
evaluations are completed. Dianne Mahan is the person in charge of transcript
evaluations. Once we have everything in place to evaluate, the actually
evaluation process takes anywhere from two to seven days, depending on
whether or not it is a peak period, as well as how many transcripts we have
to evaluate.

Many times the
evaluator only evaluates the courses that are specific to the major. A student
can go the Advising or the specialty advisor to have an unofficial evaluation
done. Jon did remind the group that when evaluating any transcripts that come from
a school using a quarter system, the advisor must multiply the credit by .67 to
determine if the number matches our requirements.

4.Discuss the process
the Nursing program uses to obtain transcripts that are from somewhere other
than SJC.

ØTo maintain
their application deadlines, the Nursing Department requests transcripts to be sent
to the department separate from the ones sent to Admissions. The student is
told that Admissions will make the final decision on the SJC application, but
that it helps the application process to submit one the department. Is this
process acceptable? Kim and Jon saw nothing wrong with this procedure. Kim did
point out that when a student receives their welcome letter from Admissions,
they do tell the student to contact their specialty advisors for program
specific admission.

5.On
the SJC transcript in Web Advisor transfer credits show up as General electives
XX Credits; once Admissions has officially accepted transfer credit. We were
told that in Datatel we would be able to drill down and see the actual course
numbers on the official transfer transcript. Is this possible?

ØWhen the college moved to new software, it was decided that entering
individual courses for every student would be impossible to accomplish in a timely
manner. If a student has more than 4, 6, or 8 transfer credits showing on the
transcript, then e-mail/call Dianne Mahan and ask her to “unbundle” the
students transfer credits.

6.When
advising students is there a way to avoid signing in twice to gain access to
Web Advisor?

ØGo to
SJC web page. Use the Quick Search option. Click on Web Advisor, Log In. That’s
the easiest way we know to not have to log in twice. You can also copy and
paste a short cut on your desk top that will take you straight to Web Advisor.

7.Can
I allow students that I advise to register on-line? Is there a flag/hold that
would force the person to call me?

ØAs an
advisor, you will need to refer to Ken Kernagis to answer this question fully.
From an Admissions only perspective, students are blocked from Web Advisor if
they have not completed at least 24 credit hours (Advisors need to go to the
PERC screen and unblock their advisor hold). After the hold is lifted, and
unless a student has another hold on their account (ex: library, business
office, financial aid…), they should be able to register. Also, please keep in
mind the registration dates. Is the student trying to register outside the
normal dates of pre/post registration? If there is a challenge accessing the
online registration, please call OTS help desk.

8.Is
there a method to eliminate the words contact “instructor” or “instructor
permission” for a limited access program in the printed schedule?

ØThis
is an issue that Linda Baker would need to address.

9.Find
a way to streamline the registration process for H.S. students.

ØNeeds
to be addressed in a face-to-face meeting when more time can be devoted to the
issue.

10.Complaint
from students, faculty and staff that the phone just rings and rings
(especially during the end and beginning of the semester). We realize these are
busy times for admissions but it increases the frustration with the
registration process

ØYes,
it is difficult to answer the phone when you have all your people assisting
students who are in line, trying to process the applications that come in
(averages 50 per day and time to enter averages 20 minutes each due to the
constant interruptions), trying to evaluate transcripts, trying to keep up with
“clean up”, trying to get all students registered in the correct class, dealing
with residence, international students, change of information, change of
status, transcript requests, and answering the phone that rings non –stop at
every desk, on several lines. As you know, SJC has grown exponentially;
however, the Admissions staff has not. In addition, we have lost 40% of our
professional staff, and they may not be replaced. Please know we do our utmost
best to handle ALL students’ needs during ALL times of the year. Please also
consider that EVERY student, in EVERY program, for ANY reason, must come
through Admissions. In addition, for whatever reason, Admissions seems to be
the place all calls are forwarded to if no one else knows how to answer it. We
would appreciate any help with this you would be willing to give. Dave Eppich
interjected that there has been an analysis of student intake issues we are
having with an increased number of on-campus and online students. Based on that
information, different task forces have been created to find a solution. They
are also looking into the different options available with the new phone system
i.e.: A message that tells people calling in that we are experiencing a high
volume of calls and to please be patient with us.

11.Add/Drop
slip process needs clarification for online students.

ØFor
students who cannot physically have a slip signed and turned in because of
distance, Admissions will accept an e-mail or fax. However, the e-mail must
have a concrete identifier like a signature and social or photo. Note: this was
specifically addressing students who need to drop all classes or drop then add
a class. Any student that needs to drop one class can do so through Web
Advisor.

ØFor
now the procedure we have is working. The student sends you an e-mail
specifically asking to be registered into the class; you as the advisor send it
to Admissions giving your permission. We then register the student and confirm.
This way we have it on paper that they asked to be registered and were not just
asking for information on the class. This will remedy the issue we have with
students who do not pay and then claim they did not want to register.

13.Is
there a way to accommodate the health sciences courses that do not run
concurrently with the college semesters? Students can’t enter in to a
random course; they have to be run simultaneously.

ØThis
question was specifically related to grading. Jon stated that the Instructor
just needs to call and ask for the course grading to be “turned on”. There is
however nothing they can do about the deadlines that have been decided on by
administration. There may be a way to enter and then roll special beginning and
dates for courses like this. Admissions is continually working with OTS to try
to utilize Datatel in every way.

14.During
the summer, we (OLER/HHPC) offer classes that will start on Saturday and will
end on a Sunday. We have students that do not register for the class but
will show up on the first day. We do not want to turn these people
away….however, we cannot get them registered into the class until after the
class is finished. How are we supposed to enroll these students into
classes?

ØIdeally
the student needs to register prior to the course no matter what. If there are
occasional situations where you have a few students that come the day of, all
information and payments must be turned in Monday morning. The State will
begin to question how the college should be reimbursed for a student who
registered after the class ended.

15.On
occasion we (OLER/HHPC) have classes that begin and end before census
date. One issue we are running into is that students will enroll in the
class, participate in the class and then they get dropped for nonpayment.
Unfortunately there are lab fees (food, lodging, etc…) associated with these
classes and the student does not pay these fees. Essentially they are
getting to go on field outings and take the class for free. Is there a
way we can stop this?

ØThere
were several suggestions on how to remedy this issue. Proof of payment must be
presented by the student before they can leave with the class. Moving the
classes up a week or back a week to avoid census. Admission is also looking
into changing the drop for nonpayment to an earlier date. Marcel and Josh will
continue to work on this with Jon.

16.When
we submit a substitution waiver for a class that means we as the health
professionals will accept it, it is at times very difficult to get admissions
to accept the substitution despite that fact.

ØThis
statement is true when it comes to the courses that are medical courses. When
it comes to the general education courses, Admissions must make the decision.
Jon utilizes the Deans of Business, Humanities, Math and Science to assist him
in making sure the courses truly are equal. Jon stated that he will be holding
a meeting in the very near future with all the Deans to address this issue. New
protocols and procedures need to be put in place to handle substitution waivers
more efficiently and properly.

Everyone thanked Jon
and Kim for coming and the information they provided. Dave ended the discussion
with an update on the background check issue. The handbooks and policies from
each Health Sciences program are being reviewed by legal counsel. There will a meeting
on April 15th to go over the findings.